Nothing Reflects Nothing
by Malhearst
Summary: Mirrors don't reflect mirrors, because nothing reflects nothing. He looks up at the plaque with his supposed name and doesn't see himself. It is empty.


_Gilderoy Lockhart_.

The name shimmers in greeting. He has read it many times over; it is a symbol of home. It means nothing to him, but the Healers in St. Mungo's have taught him that it reflects his soul.

He sees it for what it is; an empty mirror.

In his spare time, he has borrowed books. Desperately leafing through pages, feeling the rush of wind as the words meet his eyes—fleeting, desirous, a language he can't unlock because he doesn't understand the pragmatics; there is no context—he searches with his eyes and his mind, reaching out to grasp what he doesn't understand.

Buddhism teaches him about mirror magic. Mirrors don't reflect mirrors, because nothing reflects nothing. He looks up at the plaque with his supposed name and doesn't see himself. It is empty.

They say he had an ego when he knew himself, and Buddhism struggles to show people that their ego is all there is, but he has lost himself, and the world still exists. The pain, the desire.

Rita Skeeter visits him one day. She holds pen and paper, and she copies the name on the door to the white, blank page in front of her. She creates something from nothing, and he wants so badly to believe. When she leaves in a huff, in frustration, she leaves the name behind, and he clings to it, holding it to his chest, rocking back and forth, whispering, "Mine," over and over again.

It doesn't bring back the memories, the histories, the ego, the world.

He's not allowed to read his own books. They tell him that they might upset him, but don't tell him why (something happened, someone happened, the stars, the moon, they have all been blown out; the possible reasons for his imagined sensitivity whirl around themselves in his head). Perhaps his books are considered another mirror, one he's not allowed to look into.

How he wants to.

A mirror reflecting something terrible is still a mirror reflecting mirrors. If they're afraid the books might upset him, it's because the books upset them, and his fingers itch to find out how. They are machines and energies, reacting to other energies, reflecting themselves into the world. He learns quickly that human beings can be taught, can be wrought, can be pushed a little to the side with this emotion, a little to the front with that.

Gilderoy shimmers and reflects his golden hair when he mirrors himself in it.

His sister visits one day, and when she speaks, he imagines he sounds like their mother. She calls him _Giddy_ , and when he asks her why, she replies that it's short for _Gideon_.

"But you were never satisfied, were you?" she says with a hint of a smile, and he feels the energies; an orange mirth, a turquoise schadenfreude, a pale rose familial recognition. She is fond and jealous of him, and when she says _Gideon_ , he finally finds something he wants to be mirrored in: love and envy.

"You were so vain," she says, and he discards this. She mirrors herself in him and back, and he's not interested. "You had to be named something that sounded _golden_."

 _Gilded Gilderoy with his goldilocks_.

"Tell me a story," he says, because he feels dangerous and charged, and his sister is the first person he wants to try his experiment on.

She raises her eyebrows. "What story?"

"I don't remember any of them," he says with a chuckle, and to his great pride, she mirrors it. "You can choose."

"Do you want one of your own?"

The shake of his head is instinctual but intellectual. It's a test of energies; if he appears humble, can he push her understanding of him?

 _Can he trick her?_

Her expression has softened when he raises his gaze to her face. If eyes are mirrors into the soul, then she is like him; all he sees in the blank surface is himself as she sees him now.

Losing his memory is his best chance of changing what people see in him. Someone without history is without identity, and only now is he beginning to rebuild. He grasps at their hope and mirrors it in his expression and behaviour. He'll tell them to call him Gideon, and he will be loved and envied.

He'll mirror himself in a new story.

"Tell me one about love. I bet you know a lot about love."

Her cheeks tint with pink, and he knows that he's right: people usually strive to become the people you expect them to be. He has become her mirror—blank and unknowable—but she doesn't know that nothing reflects nothing, and that what she sees in herself is her own willing deception. He feels who she wants to be, and he changes to show her that accordingly.

His sister tells him a story about love, and it is exquisite.

When she leaves, he reflects that he now knows his own name, and that even though nothing reflects nothing, he'll never be nothing again.

* * *

 **A Study of Magical Objects:** _#6, Task No. 1_ — Write about a character who has a terrible long-term memory (note: You cannot write about Neville Longbottom).


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